


everything I see

by Lleu



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, Memories, Oral Sex, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 23:41:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21107906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lleu/pseuds/Lleu
Summary: you were ready for anything but this.





	everything I see

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wallflowering](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wallflowering/gifts).

> I heard you’ve been having a rough time lately, wallflowering — I hope this story will help in some way, even if only as catharsis, given its tone.
> 
> title and epigraph from Sufjan Stevens’s “The Only Thing”.

> _should I tear my eyes out now?_  
_everything I see / returns to you somehow_  
_should I tear my heart out now?_  
_everything I feel / returns to you somehow_

*

_“go for the eyes!”_

_“which ones?”_

_“all of them!”_

*

it’s like nothing you ever could have imagined. one second he’s there, your voices ringing in Guardian Bravo’s conn-pod, first defiant and then in pain as the bio-feedback hits. then the crushing, shattering impact, and, just like that, he’s gone. you were ready for anything but this.

the silence is the most devastating thing you’ve ever experienced. you yell, desperately, furiously —

_how could we—? how could _it_—? how could he be—_

— just to try to fill the void. you want to smash something. it. a kaiju. but your leg is trapped and you can’t get the leverage to free yourself alone. you can’t look to your right because all you’ll see is

him.

*

“hey.”

the cadet sitting across from you is smaller than you. dark hair, dark eyes. nice smile — he’s grinning at you expectantly, waiting for you to answer, so you do.

“hey,” you say. _he’s cute_, you think.

“what’s your name?” he asks. he tilts his head slightly, trying to read your name badge, half-covered by your open shirt. “Zaslav?”

“Zaslavsky,” you say. “Ilya Zaslavsky.”

he nods and smiles again. you smile back. “Suresh Khurana. nice to meet you, Cadet Zaslavsky.”

he sticks out his hand and you take it. “likewise, Cadet Khurana.”

“call me Suresh,” he says.

“Ilya.”

*

it’s funny, you think, bitterly, later, how much of what you saw when you drifted was memories of the two of you.

*

your first drift is nothing like what you expected. the neural handshake hits you like a moving train — you’re glad Ranger Burke suggested you close your eyes — made stranger because it hits your _mind_ but not your body. your thoughts were racing anyway but now suddenly everything is doubled: there’s you and there’s you, but one of you is someone else. Suresh.

_you’re four you tell your grandmother you’re going to be a Jaeger pilot when you grow up she frowns_  
_your father tells you _you’re wasting your potential the Jaeger program is dead besides there’ll be drones soon_ you look him in the eyes say _fuck you_ the first time you_  
_you’re eight glued to the radio listening to the news as they announce the war is over you should be happy part of you thinks _what do I do now  
_you look around at the other cadets your heart starts pounding_ I don’t belong here maybe he was right  
hey_ you say _he’s cute_ you think_  
_who am I_  
_who_  
_you_  
_what_

you open your eyes — both of you, for the first time but not (and on some level you already know this) the last.

“whoa,” you say.

“yeah,” you answer.

you look down at your hands, find you’re surprised at the shape and size of them — _whose surprise? who’s surprised?_ — look up again. Ranger Burke is watching you; he nods approvingly, and you turn to grin at — Ilya?

with a lurch you fall — that’s the only word for it, even though your body doesn’t move — out of the drift. it’s not a pleasant feeling.

“ow,” Suresh says. he’s got his eyes closed and is rubbing his temples, wincing.

“ow,” you agree.

*

there’s more than half a Jaeger at Suresh’s funeral. there’s almost no _you_ at Suresh’s funeral, but Tahima promises that if you want to leave at any time he’ll go with you so you don’t have to awkwardly leave by yourself, so you go, although you don’t actually _hear_ anything anyone says.

Tahima’s got his arm around your shoulder; on one level it’s comforting.

on another, it should be Suresh there with you.

*

after a drift — you’ve been doing this long enough now that you’ve lost track of exactly what number it is — after you’ve changed out of your drivesuits, Suresh pulls you into a corner and, stretching up ever so slightly, kisses you. you close your eyes and kiss him back. your thoughts drift lazily towards his, following the faint trail that is ghost drifting.

“as promised,” he says when you break the kiss. then, saying just what you were thinking — not that he’d need the drift to know that: “shower?”

“shower,” you agree, and he grins; it’s infectious in his own right, and you can feel his simple satisfaction — and an echo, to be fair, of horniness — reaching out to meet yours. you grin back.

it’s not the first time you’ve exchanged blowjobs (quickly but probably less discreetly than you’d like to think) in the shower. you love the way Suresh’s breath starts to hitch right before he cums; he — and you’d know this from the drift even if he hadn’t told you — loves the way you moan, or groan, or whatever you want to call it, when your cock hits the back of his throat _just_ right.

(not the first time, just a good time. _we’re here for a good time, not a long time_, he said to you the first time. _I like you, I know you like me — what do you say?_

_works for me_, you answered.)

*

you think: _how fucked up is it that we were eighteen and joking about each other’s funerals?_

you think: _how fucked up is it that we were eighteen and joking about _Suresh’s_ funeral?_

you think: _how fucked up is it that we were joking about Suresh’s funeral and now he’s fucking _dead_?_

you think: _I never got to tell him I love — I loved him._

there are so many things you never got to do.

*

he sleeps in your bed, once. no sex — you’re in a shared dorm room, after all. it’s just..._good_ to have him there. you wrap your arms around him and press your nose into the back of his neck, breathe deep.

none of the other cadets comment on it, which is good because probably, from an official perspective, your relationship, whatever it is, would be frowned upon.

*

when you dream, sometimes it’s _about him_ and sometimes it’s _his dreams_. you wake up and your body feels — too big. awkward. you curl up into a ball in your bed, trying to make yourself small, conscious the whole time that even if you remember what it was like to _be Suresh_ you’re still just

Ilya.

(_just Ilya_, alone with the cruelty of your own thoughts, except when you’re — almost — not alone, when you feel like if you could just reach a little farther there he’d be, smiling, waiting for you.)

your PPDC grief counselor warned you this was a possibility. “when you drift with someone for any extended period of time,” they said, “there’s always a certain amount of slippage. death tends to bring it out more prominently.”

they say they’ll try to arrange for you to meet with other pilots who’ve been through this, but there aren’t many of them, and they don’t sound optimistic about the chances that any of them will want to talk. you doubt it would help anyway. you’re not sure you _want_ it to help.

how could you live without him, now? who would you be if — and you _don’t_ say this to your counselor — you let him die again? how could you live with yourself?

*

you were ready for anything but this.


End file.
